


Heartstone

by Mertiya



Series: Story Circle [13]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Betrayal, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Flashbacks, Loss, Non-Linear Narrative, i just, i just have a lot of feels about these two, okay you guys?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7890787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nahiri recalls Innistrad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartstone

She dreams in red and wakes to darkness, and she does not know where she is.

The darkness is like a living thing, come to choke the life out of her, and she feels phantom hands caressing her limbs, her torso, and she hears noises at the corner of her hearing, soft murmurs and laughter, until she is shaking so violently she cannot even force her hands to move to start a fire.  It takes too long, with her stiff, scared hands, but eventually, the darkness is broken by the flickering flames, and she is able to look around.

There are stars above her, and there are pebbles on the ground.  She kneels on the dirt, feels the stones poking her in the knees, and she pushes her hands so close to the fire that the heat is almost burning.  She needs the sensation to ground her, or she will not know where she is, and if she does not know where she is, she could still be _there,_ the cold walls around her, the chill of nothingness in her bones.

There are noises again, and she presses her hand into her mouth until she cannot hear them, bites her fingers until the pain sears into her consciousness.  She is safe.  She is here now.  She is not there.

And yet, she was not dreaming of that dark, hollow prison; she was not dreaming of betrayal.   _Oh, weren’t you, though?_ whispers a soft, mocking voice inside her head.  

It isn’t betrayal.  She never promised anything.

In her dreams, the cold stones rise dark against the horizon, and her angry glee rises with them.   _Sorin,_ she thinks, _Now you’ll suffer_.  As she thinks this, a hand slides into hers, and there is a soft giggle at her elbow.

“Aren’t they pretty?”  She’s rough and ragged and a little dirty, but always carries herself with courage.  She wears a strange headdress that the planeswalker cannot even begin to guess the origins of, and her wavering whistle causes the dead to rise from the ground.  And she is no Walker; the taste of the Eternities is forever forbidden to her.

And yet, there are times when Gisa makes her want to forget the pull of the aeons, and instead sit in a graveyard and laugh as Gisa makes a zombie dance for them.  Perhaps that’s why, when Gisa kisses her, she doesn’t pull away.

This was her dream, and something in her does not know if it is a memory, or if it is nothing more than a desire.  Her certainties were stripped away by centuries in the iron cage.  But this was her dream:

Gisa beneath her on the cold stone floor of the little cottage; Gisa’s dress around her waist.  Her own fingers, feeling the warmth between the necromancer’s legs, as the flickering firelight plays over both of them.  Gisa is moaning, writhing back against her, and they’re kissing.  She does not taste ash and dust and death; she tastes only sweat and desire, and she moves from Gisa’s lips to her neck, kissing gently downwards toward her collarbone.

This warmth, this heat between her legs, as she presses herself against Gisa, this is the first time she has felt warm since the darkness closed over her head a millennia ago.  Fingers grope her hips and thighs, slide clumsy up her stomach and to her breasts; Gisa whines and bucks against her, shuddering and biting down on her shoulder.

Moments later, Gisa flops back to the floor and grins, a hopeless, helpless, lopsided grin.  “I’ve never had a friend before, you know.  I think I like it.”

Gisa is likely dead or worse, by now.  She is nothing more than another planebound creature, condemned by the loss of the plane that she helped destroy–not willingly, precisely, not intentionally, but she built the Drownyard Temple without question.  And if she would not have questioned the woman she regarded as her only _friend_ , that was her own folly.

It was not a betrayal.

Nahiri made no promises.


End file.
